


Your Hand Is All I Have

by midnightdown (sailorsuga)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Siblings, Family Issues, Gen, Song Lyrics, The Styles Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5220770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailorsuga/pseuds/midnightdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘All you wanted was somebody who cares’ Edward was never anyone’s favorite</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Hand Is All I Have

**Author's Note:**

> (2010/11): Okay, don’t ask why I did this but it kept bugging me like every fucking day and I thought it’d be cute, alright? Anyway lyrics are from All You Wanted by Michelle Branch and, yeah, if anyone could get thestylestwins to see this that’d be great cuz I’m too terrified to do it myself, yup, enjoy.
> 
> (2015): So I wrote this back when fans started making a lot of edits of "The Styles Twins" and that inspired. Also, here's a shocker, I don't hate this story lol There's some things about it I don't like, of course, but I actually don't hate it like I do most of the others that I wrote. But either way, I wrote this when I was 14 so there's plenty of grammatical/spelling errors, bad research, and overall cringey things.

_.: I wanted to be like you, I wanted everything :._

Edward was never anyone’s favorite.

Not when Harry could sing and Harry could smile and laugh and just make everything seem so goddamn amazing.

Edward could blow bubbles off of his tongue and he found ways to scare Gemma by hanging things on top of her door.

But no one ever really made a big deal out of that, not really.

And he gives a crooked smile like it doesn’t make a difference.

Edward doesn’t ask for attention even though he wants it.

He doesn’t like trying for it.

When Harry makes an A on his assignments, he runs home and his face is glowing and his eyes sparkle like diamonds and he waves it in Mom’s face like it’s a trophy.

And she secures it on the refrigerator with a Mickey Mouse magnet and Harry giggles and smiles because that’s all he ever does.

And she asks Edward what did he get and he shrugs and tosses his B paper in the trash without another word.

He wishes he showed it to her. Maybe she would’ve put it on the fridge.

But he thinks it’d look stupid next to Harry’s.

Sometimes Edward stares at Harry smiling and wonders if that’s how he looks when he does it.

With pearly white, blinding teeth and pink lips and dimples on each cheek making cute dark dents.

And he practices how to in the mirror when no one is awake.

But he doesn’t think it looks the same and he doesn’t feel like Harry because his looks twisted and forced and weird on Harry’s face so he stops trying and flickers off the bathroom lights before he slips back into his and Harry’s room.

Harry isn’t sleeping but it’s so dark that Edward doesn’t notice.

Edward doesn’t like it when Harry sings.

He used to like it when it was only them, when it was their little secret and Harry would sing Beatles’ songs to him and Edward would feel sleepy by the time Harry stopped.

He liked it when Harry would cover songs off their endless supply of CDs and he’d let Edward listen, even attempt at beat-boxing to them just to be doing something.

He starts wanting Harry to keep his mouth closed when he starts singing in front of Mom and Gemma; when they start clapping along and cheering for him; when Harry smiles and sings louder and even better than he did.

He starts wishing Harry couldn’t even talk when he sings at their aunt’s wedding. And everyone is dancing and humming to the words and clapping except Edward, even when people try to make him, he keeps in his seat and keeps quiet.

That night he tries to sing “Hey Jude” in the bathroom and he thinks his voice sounds scratchy and like he’s croaking and the noise he makes dies down.

Harry’s listening on the other side of the door but he doesn’t know that.

One day, Edward cuts his hair.

The scissors were stolen from the art room in school and he keeps them in the back of his sock drawer; shielded by white and gray fabric and no one, not even Harry, knows he has them.

One day, he digs through his drawer and pulls them out and stares for a really long time before he sneaks in the bathroom.

He takes the blades to curly locks of chocolate colored hair and snips at it cautiously.

The strands float to the tiles and his eyes are murky and forest green now.

He thinks he doesn’t look like Harry anymore.

Water is welling up in his eyes as he snips off some more of his hair.

And his vision is blurred when his mop of hair doesn’t hang past his ears anymore.

And he’s hiccupping by the time there’s no more he can cut.

He gives a watery smile at his reflection when he really thinks he doesn’t look like Harry.

The door opens and his brother (not his twin, not anymore) is standing in the doorway.

And they’re both quiet for a really long time.

And it stays like that.

When they’re both taller and their voices start to sound deeper sometimes, Edward wants his own room.

And he keeps his hair short and he’s dyed it black like Mom and Gemma’s and Harry thinks it makes his green eyes look so bright but Edward won’t let them shine.

Harry doesn’t want him to leave yet. And he knows he sounds selfish and childish but he wasn’t ready, he liked knowing Edward was right across the room.

When they were little, Harry was scared of monsters.

Because when Gemma and her friends watched horror films in the living room, the twins snuck down and watched it from behind the bars of the staircase rails.

And Harry always shook and cried a little and Edward always scoffed because he was never scared.

Edward was the fearless one; he always was.

So he would whisper to Harry, voice low so that mom or Gemma didn’t hear the curse words he used, that if any monsters got in their room, he’d “kick their ass and make sure they never mess with you again.”

And Harry believed him.

And they were both old enough to know monsters were just lies and special effects in Hollywood movies but Harry didn’t want him to leave him here alone.

But when he whispers to Edward to think it over, the boy doesn’t even bother to respond and just goes to his new place in the guest room.

Harry wonders what he did wrong.

Edward doesn’t try to make good grades like Harry anymore.

He doesn’t try to smile like him anymore because he knew he’d never look like him, no matter how identical Anne says they are.

He doesn’t try to sing like him because it makes him feel like shit.

He doesn’t try to make himself something special like Harry fucking Styles because it never got him anywhere.

He smokes cigarettes behind the school and he makes B’s and C’s and he’s not talented at anything other than avoiding his own brother.

And he tells himself he doesn’t mind it.

Maybe it was supposed to be like this.

Maybe Harry was supposed to shine and glow in ultraviolet light and he was just supposed to lurk in the dark of his shadow with no questions asked.

Harry wishes he wasn’t weak.

He wishes he still didn’t freeze up at scary movies and he wishes he wasn’t scared to speak up when he needed to and he wishes he could fight and he wishes he could down alcohol and not worry about the consequences and that he could actually stop giving a damn for one minute of his life.

But he never does.

And when Edward walks through the house, muttering a hello to Gemma and smelling like smoke and blood, Harry doesn’t want to look at him.

They look different now and they’re not twins anymore and Edward doesn’t even call him “bro” or “Hazza” anymore, just Harry and that’s it and Harry doesn’t even have the courage to say “Ed.”

Harry’s never thought he could hate his own name so much.

Because he was never just Harry.

He feels nostalgia and the need to scream welling up in his chest but he just sings to himself until it passes.

When Edward was little, he used to break things a lot.

Because he was clumsy and reckless and rambunctious and Harry used to love it when Edward got hyper because he was so hard to control and he knocked things over—vases and glasses and jars, whatever was in the line of fire—and he always got in trouble but it never made him stop.

There’s a scar on his abdomen from when he fell on the broken pieces of Gemma’s mirror that he broke when he was six and he can feel it throbbing as he takes a long swallow of his beer.

His mind is hazy and full of Harry’s smile and Anne’s voice lecturing him and every time Gemma called him annoying and he just wishes he could be someone exceptional and someone’s favorite and he passes out behind the school wishing he looked like Harry again.

Harry throws his arm over his shoulders and helps him home when he finds him.

He kinda feels like his brother again.

“I’ll stop singing if you want me to.”

Harry doesn’t know why he says it but he knows he means it; he feels like crying and hurting himself and apologizing for things he’s done, even if he didn’t mean them.

Edward’s hair is longer now but it’s still coal black and he keeps it in a small ponytail and he never lets it get as curly as Harry’s and if it does, Harry thinks he looks sick.

He looks at Harry for a long while, and Harry thinks his eyes look muddy green like swamp-water and he wishes that his were like that for the dumbest reasons; so that maybe they’d at least look a little bit like each other again, and people had to struggle to tell them apart again, and that maybe he’d accidentally get called “Edward” again and he could smile and say “No, I’m Harry.”

But they’re not.

And they never will be.

“Why would you stop doing something that makes other people love you?” Edward asks him and it’s not because he’s curious or he actually wants an answer; he sounds angry and his words are laced with inky black venom but Harry is truthful nonetheless.

“Because it doesn’t make you love me.” He croaks and Edward is quiet and his eyes actually look lighter for the first time in a long time before he averts them.

“Just go to bed alright? Sing all you want. Don’t fuck that up for me.”

Harry likes to think maybe Edward said it because he cares but he doesn’t hear it in his voice.

Harry doesn’t care about what he’s doing now.

He looks in the mirror and he sees Harry. He doesn’t see anyone else but him.

He doesn’t see Edward’s reflection too. Because he knows it doesn’t look like this anymore.

Harry’s eyes are slightly red and there are rings under his eyes from lack of sleep and his lips are quivering despite himself and his skin looks pale and smooth like porcelain and he hates it.

He takes a deep sigh before he removes the plastic cap from his head and licks of black, curly strands of hair fall in front of his eyes.

Harry doesn’t think he looks like Edward.

But he’s close.

He still can’t find it in him to smile though.

When it tries it wobbles and his eyes are watery.

Edward’s pissed off when he wakes up one day and he sees Harry with black hair and empty eyes.

Edward doesn’t speak to him, just stares. His mouth is pulled into a straight line and Harry’s is pulled into a crooked smile.

And Edward can remember when he used to practice his smile in the bathroom.

And how he wished it could be big and bright like Harry’s.

And how bad he felt when it didn’t.

And he goes back into his room and slams the door hard and he ignores Harry banging on the door and puts headphones on his ears and lets The Beatles sing him to sleep; not a free cover with Harry’s voice.

And even though he still feels nostalgia and anger in the pit of his stomach, he feels just a little better.

The silence when the song changes allows him to hear Harry croak out a sentence.

_“I just want my brother back…please…”_

Edward acts like it doesn’t matter.

Like it doesn’t mean shit.

Harry stops singing.

He keeps talking like the motor-mouth that he is and always has been and he’ll hum a song he knows when it plays on the radio and he smiles and laughs like he always does; bright and dimples and white teeth.

But he won’t sing.

He refuses to, you can ask him—beg him—and he doesn’t even give you an excuse, just says no in the broken yet firm kind of tone that makes you want to shut up and keeps his mouth shut.

He turns down offers at venues; and he passes on two talent shows; and he doesn’t even sing a little just for the hell of it—just because he’s Harry and singing is all he’s ever wanted to do, he won’t do it.

Edward wants to ask him why.

He wants to scream at him and curse and hit him and question where his fucking sanity went but he doesn’t.

He just watches him not sing; study and smile and nod his head to a song with his new inky black hair and foggy green eyes and wonders if that’s how he looks now.

Harry’s plucking at his guitar without making a sound behind the house when Edward finds him.

And his face is solemn and peaceful like it always is when he plays music but there are tears in his eyes and every so often, a hiccup rips from his throat and the music stops for a brief moment so he can wipe his eyes and tell himself to stop crying before shakily starting up again.

Edward feels tired and nervous and disgusting and angry—he feels everything and it all hits him hard but he sits down next to Harry anyway and leans against the house, their shoulders touching.

And Edward feels reminded of the times when they sat like this as kids and they were both so tired and sweaty and panting after a game of football but he pushes it to the back of his mind when he glances at Harry.

Black looks sad on him, he thinks, when curly strands of inky hair fall in his face that he keeps focused on the instrument despite feeling Edward next to him.

“What do you want?” he mutters and he tries to sound angry but he really only sounds like he’s going to cry if he doesn’t get his answer.

“Look.”

Edward doesn’t say anything else after that and, slowly, Harry’s foggy green eyes travel upwards and they get wider when he sees curly, messy and brown hair on Edwards head.

And Edward lets him stare and he only watches expressionlessly as the music cuts off again.

Harry’s mouth is wide open and his eyes are wide and when Edward looks hard enough, he can see shards of forest and emerald and gold and brown in Harry’s eyes and he thinks that maybe Harry can see that in his when he looks but they remain quiet.

“It’s brown.” Harry states dumbly and Edward smirks despite himself.

And he realizes how strange it feels when you haven’t done it in so long.

“It is.” He replies.

“Why?”

Edward freezes up.

He isn’t really sure what made him get up and buy the russet colored hair dye.

He wasn’t really thinking when he dyed it, he was just doing it. He knew he had reasons and he knew he had nights and nights to think about it with cigarettes between his fingers and a glass bottle to his lips but, now, he wasn’t sure.

Maybe he just felt like it.

“Why’d you dye your hair black?” he counters and he thinks Harry might freeze like him, because maybe Harry just felt like it too, maybe Harry didn’t have real reasons and maybe they still thought the same.

But he doesn’t.

“Because I missed my twin.”

Edward is quiet again when Harry says the word twin.

Because he hasn’t heard that word in a long time.

He’s heard brother and sibling.

But, at some point or another, they stopped being twins and became Edward and Harry and they weren’t one in the same and they weren’t family and they didn’t act like brothers and they didn’t even acknowledge the other’s existence.

And he feels sick when he faces Harry and sees himself.

Then he starts thinking that maybe they were identical. That they always have been. That maybe they never stopped.

“So did I.”

And he means it.

And he guesses Harry can tell because he smiles.

And Edward notices it looks crooked like his.

And he smiles back.

Harry opens his mouth and sings again.

And Edward doesn’t mind it.

Because maybe he wasn’t anyone else’s favorite.

But maybe, just maybe, he was Harry’s.

.: _Please can you tell me so I can finally see where you go when you’re gone:._


End file.
